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09 Sep 04 - phones; lunch; toxics; convention; products; bottles; freecycle
** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM **
-- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition
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Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org
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From Jesse White, Resource Management Group, Sarasota, FL, responding to the
9/3/04 article about the advantages of buying used cell phones:
The auction website eBay offers thousands of phones for sale. I recently
purchased a used one on eBay to replace a lost phone - it saved me $279 plus
tax.
E-mail: jesse [ D O T ] white [ A T ] rmg [ D O T ] us
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Excerpted from an item in the 9/6/04 Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
SAVE MONEY, REDUCE WASTE BY PACKING YOUR OWN LUNCH
It doesn't seem like much: $5 here, $7 there for a quick lunch from a deli.
Well, consider this: Say you spend $6.50 for lunch at work each day. You
could pack one at home for $3 and save nearly $5,000 within five years.
The KJE Computer Solutions financial calculators website includes a "Lunch
Savings Calculator" in which users can input the amount they spend on lunch
each day and compare it with how much they could save annually:
http://www.dinkytown.net/java/LunchSaver.html
If you pack a lunch at home: Use a lunch box to save on the cost of paper
or plastic bags; stock up during sales at grocery stores; carry reusable
containers; and take leftovers.
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Link to the Guide to Less Toxic Products, from the Nova Scotia (Canada)
Allergy and Environmental Health Association:
http://www.lesstoxicguide.ca This guide
provides information about potential health risks of commonly used products;
helps identify less-toxic alternatives for personal care, household cleaning
and baby care; and provides information to help people evaluate products
not in this guide, in order to choose the safest ones for their needs.
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Excerpted from a message from John Halenar, environmental writer and
consultant, Ridgewood, NJ:
A group I worked with, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible
Conventions (CERC), issued its final press release Aug. 26, regarding the
Republican National Convention in New York. We didn't accomplish all the
things we'd hoped to, but considering the security issues and the fact that
the Host Committee really had its hands full dealing with protestors and a
thousand other things, it's remarkable that we accomplished as much as we
did.
Waste prevention and recycling projects mentioned in the press release
include:
- Construction and trade managers working for the Host Committee in Madison
Square Garden said they expected to reuse and recycle nearly 80 percent of
all building materials used, including steel, wood, carpeting and draperies.
- At the Host Committee's hospitality services in the media center at the
James A. Farley Building, operations were entirely paperless and were
expected to reduce paper use by approximately one million pages.
- The official Media Welcome reception at Time Warner Center and other
events of the convention employed food rescue by City Harvest.
Also from the press release: CERC is a non-partisan, non-profit coalition
of more than 50 leading New York and Boston environmental organizations and
businesses, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Saunders Hotel Group,
Starwood Hotels, and New England Aquarium. CERC's mission is to promote
environmental best practices at the 2004 national political conventions;
showcase these practices to political leaders and the public; and establish
a legacy of environmental best practices for future large conventions. For
more information, visit the CERC website at: http://www.cerc04.org
E-mail: johnhalenar (A T) yahoo (D O T) com
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From Sarah Grimm, BRING Recycling, Eugene, OR:
"Good Stuff? A Behind-the-Scenes Guide to the Things We Buy," an online
guide from Worldwatch Institute, is a great waste reduction resource! They
definitely put it straight out there that reducing and reusing are better
than recycling. It's at: http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/goodstuff
E-mail: sarahg ( AT ) bringrecycling ( DOT ) org
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Excerpted from an article by Joe Truini in the 8/30/04 Waste News:
NEW ALUMINUM BOTTLE A STEP BACKWARD FOR WASTE REDUCTION
The new "aluminum bottle" - an aluminum can in the shape of a traditional
beer bottle - was introduced by Pittsburgh Brewing Co. in August for its
Iron City beer. Anheuser-Busch is considering adding aluminum bottles for
three of its brands, including Michelob. The brewer will test the containers
this fall.
Although it may look cool, the aluminum bottle "is bad news for the
environment," said Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container
Recycling Institute in Arlington, VA. The 12-ounce aluminum bottles each
weigh 1.72 ounces, three times more than a 12-ounce aluminum can, which
reverses the aluminum industry's trend of producing lighter packaging, she
said. In 1980, cans weighed about 0.7 ounces and it took about 24 to make a
pound. Today, cans weigh less than 0.5 ounces, with about 33 in a pound.
"After three decades of progress in reducing the weight of aluminum cans and
thus reducing their environmental impact, they've just really taken a step
backward with this aluminum container," Franklin said.
Aluminum bottles may not even be better environmentally than glass bottles,
despite the fact that Americans recycle aluminum beverage containers at
twice the rate as glass bottles, Franklin said. "You might have twice the
likelihood of recycling it, but it's many times more damaging to the
environment." Glass manufacturing is a fairly benign process environmentally
when compared to the impact of the energy and raw material consumption of
aluminum manufacturing, she said.
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Excerpted from an article by Alison apRoberts (not a typo) in the 9/7/04
Sacramento Bee (forwarded by Gary Liss):
FREECYCLING - THE LATEST WAY TO PUT SURPLUS STUFF TO GOOD USE
The economic revolution may not be televised, but it already appears to be
online at http://www.freecycle.org - the Web
site of the Freecycle Network. Think eBay - only free. (FreeBay has been
suggested as an alternate name). And with a different sort of
countercultural vibe that embraces the notion of a gift economy. Your
money's no good here, and neither are your offers of bartering or swapping.
This is a purely profit-free enterprise.
Freecycling is an Internet based give-it-away, take-it-away phenomenon,
organized in local member lists on Yahoo groups. Go to the main Web site,
find (or start) a local group, join it (for free), and you can let other
members of the group know about stuff you want to give away, as well as
stuff you want. Culturally, it's bigger and more complex than just a box of
free stuff. It's a lifestyle, a community, a movement to save the landfill
and help out others. You won't get rich, but you can earn countless karma
points. You get bonus points by posting offers rather than wanted notices.
Reselling is frowned on. And you can get kicked off the list if you start
talking money.
What makes it remarkable is the way people are buying into it. More than
450,000 people have joined. There are more than 75 groups listed in other
countries, from Australia to Thailand to Japan and Germany. In California
there are more than 75 groups. The biggest group anywhere is in Portland,
Oregon, with more than 9,000 members, followed by Austin, Texas, with nearly
6,000. For a membership organization (Priceless Club, anyone?), that's not
bad growth, especially considering it started up a little more than a year
ago.
Katherine Tikker-Ostorero started up the Sacramento list last December. Five
moderators help her to process membership requests and monitor postings.
(The rules are simple: No politics, no spam, no money.) There are dozens of
postings every day, pretty evenly split between wants and offers. Those who
want things that are posted contact the donor and make pickup arrangements.
The donor then posts a "taken" notice on the site. A recent look at the
local site showed the following want listings: cordless drills and other
tools for the nonprofit B Street Theatre (lots of nonprofits belong to
freecycle lists) and a jogging stroller for someone else. The following
items were listed as taken: a vacuum cleaner, cloth diapers, wine glasses, a
toaster and a Porta Potty.
Deron Beal, who is 37 and lives in Tucson, Arizona, didn't know he was
setting up a grass-roots movement when he started Freecycling. He was just
another MBA who had decided to work for the public good after years in
international marketing. So he went to work for RISE, a nonprofit recycling
and employment training group in Tucson. RISE was given lots of office
furniture and other perfectly good no-longer-wanted stuff. Beal started
matching up local nonprofits with the discarded goods. Then he got the idea
of a message board online to make the matchups easier. He figured there was
no reason not to make it available to the general public as well.
Freecycle.org went online in May of 2003. And took off. It started picking
up steam and getting writeups in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal
and People magazine. Time Magazine dubbed it "one of the 50 coolest" Web
sites of 2003. Beal still works at RISE and doesn't make anything from the
freecycling venture. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have ambitions for it,
and he spends upwards of 40 hours a week working on realizing them. He
founded a Freecycle Network nonprofit in February to garner funding to
create freestanding Web pages, off Yahoo, away from the madding marketing
world (and the annoying pop-ups that are part of it).
"We want to keep it noncommercial and nonprofit and we want to be able to
create gift communities; my dream is to make it easier to foment those kinds
of things," Beal says. He would like to see the network mobilized to help
out in disaster situations. Freecyclers already have assisted Florida
residents to replace needed items lost to recent storms. And there are lots
of stories of freecyclers replacing stolen bikes and helping those who have
hit other bumps in the road.
Beal says he has seen freecycling work a kind of anti-marketing magic on
those who participate. "It's kind of a weird psychology. People often join
to get free stuff, but then they realize they can get rid of their old
junk," he says. "There's this kind of 'aha' effect when someone drives off
with stuff - it feels good; it's kind of a life-affirming thing."
To freecycle, it seems, is to discover that it really is better to give than
to receive.
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